Archive for April 23rd, 2007

For those who do or don't realize this, I'm a computer programmer by trade. This is what I do for a living, and I'd like to think that I'm half way decent at it. However, there are definitely days where it is extremely frustrating being in my position. A simple example that any help desk person can give is "what is the any key?". The following email requesting assistance is equally frustrating but for another reason.

I'd sent an email out with a rather large url. As a result, I guess on some email readers (i.e. Outlook), the end of the line was chopped off (note I'm using Entourage, through Exchange, and it still doesn't support line wrapping appropriately *sigh*). The result of the email looked something like this on this persons screen:

If you'll note, it's pretty obvious, or I'd think as a tech person, that the tml is on the second line was cut off. Particularly since it was on it's lonesome there. Now, here's the thing that just makes me sigh with frustration: It wasn't a user who complained about the link not working, but one of the other, "senior" developers. It's as bad as a story I heard once about a developer trying to stick a floppy disk in upside down and calling tech support because it's not working. I'd expect that kind of question from someone who's very new to the internet. What's worse, is that this kind of response is rather typical, and is from a developer who I'm supposed to have work on applications I develop.

Normally I like my job, but it's definitely stuff like this that makes my job suck.